What is mental health for those who are displaced? Is it even a priority considering that the first thing one needs to do is to survive? And what of conflict that arises from being a person from two places? Whom do you identify as when you are of many? How does being displaced affect an identity? The first episode of the podcasts connected to the project We Who Move the World Forward at ACUD Macht Neu revolves around these questions. Anguezomo Mba Bikoro and Fetewei Tarekegn Bring these questions related to forced displacement and bring forth further to connect it to mental health and identity politics. The guest panelists are Hossam Aldeen and Shariff Adenkule. Hossam Aldeen is a Journalist & activist who has spent many years working both in Syria and Europe and currently resides in Germany. Shariff Adenkule was displaced from his medical education in Kiev due to the war In Ukraine and has been forced to relocate to Berlin and start his life all over again. The recorded conversation will be available in The minority report on REBOOT.Fm and will be available on refugeworldwide.com
Refugeeness, says Hossam Aldeen, is an imposed condition. It can be assigned to you at any time in life, regardless of your class, cultural, or financial situation. Refugeeness means that one is entirely unable to make decisions as to where you land. It is a state of survival. It is a state of dehumanization. It is a state where you are no longer safe at home, nor at your new destination. The departure does not guarantee the arrival. Fleeing spaces and common neighborhoods, one flees the ambush of a state system embedded with its history, surveillance, tax obligations, and racial abuse. Finding one's home in Germany – whose patriots call it Heimat– requires intersectional and somatic healing work to navigate unforeseen barriers and struggles.
The Nigerian medical worker Sheriff Abisoya Adenkule tells of his 'Heimat-isation'; a term he coined to describe a state that is neither home (Africa), nor in the place where he has landed (Europe). Heimat-isation happens for Sheriff in the in-between places, in the spaces of collective practices beyond his academic education. When studying in Ukraine, he felt more at home and built commonalities with communities. When the war forced millions to flee, he felt disembodied and pushed into survival mode whilst navigating his new country of residence, Germany. The Tubman Network provided intersectional tools for Sheriff to build a home, prioritizing his safety, somatically and mentally. Nevertheless the impact of Germany's past on migration and mobility policies during WWII and inside the GDR system seems to persist in the bureaucracies of migrational realities and colonial legacies. For the African diaspora this struggle is an abusive cycle that remains quite different from the realities of East European migrants, not least as Germany has enacted multiple recognized genocides on the African continent.
With the trauma of physical and psychological displacement, we ask how such dynamics affect our health and the accessibility for supportive tools. Sheriff continues:
In Germany, the uncertainty about my status is the most pressing issue because you’re constantly on the hunt for new information in the hope that the government doesn’t expel you. The anxiety can be crushing, and, in the time I’ve spent as a displaced person, I’ve witnessed people succumb to this anxiety and completely shut down. It’s hard to make friends outside of your community (PoC), and it can be lonely when you have to rely on people you don’t know and with the stigma of being a refugee.
This isolation makes solidarity difficult. Refugeeness is something that all communities share, yet in practice can be devastating when non-consensual actions break human dignity, when the positions of individual and collective victimhood come into conflict, and when racial dynamics are enacted differently according to class struggles and cultural bias. Solidarity requires the acceptance, acknowledgement and understanding of difference, and that we are divided by class, cultural experience, race, and modes of gaslighting pitting one community against another in a cycle of performative victimhood.
In some of the Lager Reports archives, published by International Womens* Space, we hear the testimonies of mostly Black women describing the sense of homelessness engendered by the constant psychological and physical abuse within the camp systems. In the exhibition there are archival visual traces of women such as Rita Owuor Ojunge and Sista Mimi that describe the risks taken when succumbing to German 'integration'. The risk of sexual abuse and racism in private and public spaces, the risk of beng murdered without the chance of a fair trial represent permanent dangers. These Lager are designed just like the colonial camp barracks in Sossen, to isolate, control, abuse, shame, and destroy. There is no support for gender-related challenges, policing of family mobility, estrangement and segregation between groups, poor healthcare services, and nourishment. Mental oppression is exercised through forms of administrative bullying including the invasion of private spaces at any time, and the imposition of monetary fines. Lager systems control their inmates by tracking their mobility and furthering the bureaucratic oppression that contributes to chronic illnesses, complex post-traumatic stress disorders, even cancers and suicide. Hossam responds:
Mental health for someone displaced is a complex struggle—survival often takes precedence, yet addressing mental well-being remains crucial. The conflict of being a person of two places can lead to a fragmented identity, impacting how one identifies and navigates the world. [...] Forced exile is considered one of the most severe forms of torture. Before the war in Syria, I was passionate about travel and always confident that I would return to my homeland soon. I longed for my home, the streets, and neighbors. However, they are now gone, leaving my country soulless, like a dead body. In this forced exile, I lack the energy to adapt and find myself detached, leaving everything behind. I have become like a person searching for their identity in the mirage of non-belonging.
Fetewei Tarekegn shares this perspective, adding the following observation:
The continued shock of leaving a brutalized home and then trying to understand a new country (home); then reconciling these two places is exhausting. In fact, it is the only refuge most have in a land that they barely recognize. We are declared outsiders holding a German passport. It requires a certain meditation to reconcile these identities, but most cannot because they are too busy trying to survive and keep their loved ones safe.
“Displacement, anxiety, depression, and fear”, says Jennifer Kamau, “exacerbate if the displaced person experiences hostility from the structures of the hosting country.” An example of racist and colonial structures that are still prevalent in Germany, is the nature of the language barrier and the bureaucracy that we all face. The pressure that these barriers mean for our mental health are never considered as a priority for the migration offices and inside the camps. When we talk of surviving we need to acknowledge and understand the aspects of “chances and traces” from moving from one place to another. We never receive support in de-traumatisation methods to allow us to get out of survival mode and live in safer environments.
Especially as a Black person coming from Africa, such challenges arise when your Blackness first becomes an issue in interpersonal exchange; the experience turns into a culture shock that is hard to overcome. The issue of being in two places at the same time, in most cases, is never such a big conflict because the second place is a place you are forced to flee to, not something you desired, so your sense of primary identity remains profound. You know who you are, and you know where you have come from. But, in time, you learn that the sense of belonging is a constant struggle. You do everything in order to fit in and be accepted, and, in the process, that affects your identity. The question is, is it worth it?
No, because you will never belong.
Kamau reflects on citizenship and forced displacement with these words:
I will always identify as black and African. [...] Identity issues will always arise if you are not well-grounded from your origin. Issues of identity are beyond the living because it connects to ancestry. If you are not aligned with your ancestors there will always be conflicts within you. Children born in displacement are the most affected, it is a serious issue that needs attention. The sense of belonging is never there.
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- IMAGE CREDITS
Cover: Design and visual communication key, visual by Imad Gebrael.
